Republic of Peru (Country) (Geographic Keyword)
1,701-1,725 (1,760 Records)
Some pre-Hispanic textiles were complex masterpieces made with labor-intensive techniques and high quality raw materials. Nevertheless, the vast majority of textiles, those used by the population at large, were plain, simple and without any decoration. This study will present a comparative analysis between a sample of plain weaves obtained from domestic contexts and a sample of high quality textiles excavated in an elaborated Wari tomb, all of them registered at the pre-Hispanic settlement of...
Wari-Style Khipus from El Castillo de Huarmey (2017)
Archaeological evidence suggests that khipus—devices made of wrapped and knotted cords—were used by people living in the Wari Empire at least as early as Middle Horizon 1B. These Wari-style khipus, like their later, more famous, Inka descendants, likely carried and conveyed information using color and knots. Wari khipus differ from Inka khipus, however, in many respects including their use of colorful wrapping to make bands and patterns to convey information. Wari-style khipus survive in far...
Wari’s Hallowed Ground: Interpreting the Mortuary Complex of Cotocotuyoc, Cuzco, Peru (2018)
The Wari settlement of Huaro, located southeast of the Cuzco Valley in the Southern Highlands of Peru, contains a mortuary complex known as Cotocotuyoc. This towering plateau site, which overlooked the entire Huaro Wari settlement, was one of several urban components that made up a more than nine hectare Wari center, occupied for over 500 years. Excavations at Cotocotuyoc generated telling evidence for who built and occupied this settlement and how they were treated upon their deaths and in the...
Water and Hydraulic Technology in the Eastern Andean Mountains: The Amarete Valley (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Water Management in the Andes: Past, Present, and Future" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Puna Apolobamba pastures played a critical role in farming, pastoralism, and agropastoralism in the Kallawaya territory. Located to the east of the Titicaca basin, the area was dotted by sunken fields, bofedales, and water qocha reservoirs supplemented with canals. In this presentation, I discuss the nature and distribution of...
Water Management and Symbolism in the Agrarian Landscape of the Sondondo Valley, Peru (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Terraces are the clearest evidence of landscape transformation in the highlands of the South-Central Andes of Peru; they represent a magnificent and complex solution to create cultivation areas where geographical and climatic conditions were not ideal. Water management is an important piece of this system in which the water harvested in the puna area...
Water Management, Pastoralism and Settlement Shifts in the Andean Apolobamba Region (2018)
The qochas of the high-altitude Bolivian Apolobamba Puna region had a pivotal importance in the local agropastoral economies. Fed by snow melt and inner water sources, the qochas formed a complex hydrological system along the rich marshes. Although we do not know their origins, some of these qochas were modified during the Late Intermediate period, and a network of canals expanded in order to accommodate increasingly specialized pastoralism. Later the Inka arrival prompted specialized...
Water Social Relations in Transition: Local Populations and Foreign Empires in Tension over Natural Resources in Mid and Lower Lurin Valley, Peru (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Lost in Transition: Social and Political Changes in the Central Southern Andes from the Late Prehispanic to the Early Colonial Periods" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. After the Spanish arrival in the Andes, the new social, economic, and political organization mainly materialized in two spatial entities: the "reducciones" or specially-designed towns where the Andean population was forcibly resettled, and the...
Water Technology and Symbolism in the Andes (Cordillera Blanca, Ancash, Peru) (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Water Management in the Andes: Past, Present, and Future" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Dominated by the glaciated mountain couple Huascarán (male, 6768 m) and Tullparaju (female, 6395 m), the cultural landscape of the Callejón de Huaylas has long been shaped by stark contrasts in water availability. This paper showcases how water infiltration and surface runoff catchment technologies developed, as techné and as...
Water, Maps, and Mountains: Shifting Water Taskways in the Andes (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Water Management in the Andes: Past, Present, and Future" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the past as in the present water was and is a central material element of the communities of the highland Andes. Underpinning their relationship with water and the taskways this entails has been the constant negotiation and impact of human-human and human-ecology relationships. In this regard, these populations’ relationship...
Water, mines and wak’a at Belen valley in the highlands of Arica: the Inca making of a central place within the Andean transect of Arica and Parinacota (18°S) (2017)
Located on the edge of the Atacama Desert at the foot of the Carangas Altiplano, the Belén Valley witnessed substantial construction of imperial infrastructures during the late pre-Hispanic period. The Inca occupation was mainly related to agriculture, metallurgy and a sanctuary. The Belén Valley contains, in fact, the most important water resources in the upper basin of Azapa, copper and tin mines and an important mountain summit, which formed both economic and symbolic resources of special...
Waterscapes Domestication: Ponds, Fish Weirs, and Evidence of Managed Aquatic Environments in Amazonia (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Animal management and domestication have been widely studied in relation to terrestrial mammals; however, there are still debates over what “domestication” means for aquatic animals. Across the Amazon, in recent years, a great number of archaeological structures such as fish weirs, canals, ponds, and turtle and fish corrals have been documented, dating...
We Are Kin with the Land: The Role of Rock Art Sites in the Negotiation of Social Relations in the North Central Andes of Peru (2018)
Research in the highlands of Huánuco, Peru, has revealed rock art sites were used to establish, negotiate, and legitimize changing social relations for more than three millennia. Implementation of stylistic seriation bolstered by art from more securely dated archaeological deposits allowed for the development of a chronological sequence of rock art styles in Huánuco. The research revealed rock art played a prominent role in expressing changing social relations in the region. This paper focuses...
Wealth on the Hoof: Cajamarca Culture Camelid Pastoralism (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Them and Us: Transmission and Cultural Dynamism in the North of Peru between AD 250 and 950: A Vision since the Recent Northern Investigations" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Located in the Cajamarca Valley, the site of Iscoconga (50 BCE–750 CE) represents one of the few extensively explored domestic contexts of the Cajamarca Archaeological Culture. Excavations at Iscoconga revealed, among many things, that the...
Weathering of Surficial Lithic Assemblages in the Hyperarid Core of the Atacama Desert, Chile (2018)
Surficial archaeological sites are widespread in arid environments. However, due to the difficulties in numerically dating them, they are usually considered as coarse indicators of past behaviors. Here, we explore the use of lithic weathering to develop local relative chronologies, and to better incorporate these assemblages into archaeological research. We test whether the most weathered artifacts should be considered the oldest; an assumption that has informally served to compare assemblages....
Weaving with Wichuñas in the Coastal Tiwanaku Diaspora: New Insights into Camelid Bone Tool Production from Los Batanes (Sama, Peru) (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Textile production was a major economic sector in the prehispanic Tiwanaku state, for which weavers transformed camelid (llamas, alpacas) fibers and bones into utilitarian and decorative objects. As Tiwanaku pastoral communities dispersed in the wake of state collapse, they relocated to arid coastal regions where their textile industry demonstrates...
What Does the "Cruz Pata" Style Look Like?: Redefining an Enigmatic EIP Ceramic Style of the Ayacucho Valley (2018)
Dramatic culture change occurred in the Central Andes at the onset of the Middle Horizon (MH) (AD 500-1000). During this period, a state society emerged in the Ayacucho Valley and expanded across Peru. Even before the emergence of this state, however, culture contact of the Ayacucho heartland had already started with some remote regions in the late part of the Early Intermediate Period (EIP). This far-reaching contact would have gradually been intensified toward the beginning of the MH. Indeed,...
What is a Hill of Beans Really Worth?: Paleoethnobotanical Analysis of Urban Huari Foodways (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Seeing Wari through the Lens of the Everyday: Results from the Patipampa Sector of Huari" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Preliminary investigation into the use of plants at the site of Huari from the 2017 field season of the Programa Arqueológico Prehistoria Urbana de Huari resulted in new information placing the common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) as a central component of the daily meal for those living in Patipampa in...
What the Shell: the Zooarchaeology of Cerro San Isidro, Peru (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Zooarchaeologists have extensively documented the importance of marine resources in the ancient Andes, and the first field season at Cerro San Isidro (Ancash, Peru) proves no different. The multi-component hilltop site lies in the agriculturally rich 'Moro Pocket' of the middle Nepeña Valley, at least an eight-hour walk from the ocean on the north-central...
What the Shells Tell: Interdisciplinary Malocoarchaeology and Holocene Paleoclimate in Coastal Peru (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Fryxell Symposium in Honor of Dolores Piperno" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Dolores Piperno has been a trailblazer in interdisciplinary research, building on deep, innovative approaches to plant remains to answer a multitude of questions in archaeology and beyond. In this interdisciplinary spirit, I review research into Holocene paleoclimate along the Peruvian coast derived in the first instance from the study of...
What Was Tiwanaku, Really? (2021)
This is an abstract from the "A New Horizon: Reassessing the Andean Middle Horizon (AD 600–1000) and Rethinking the Andean State" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. More than 30 years ago, Garth Bawden wrote a prescient review on the "Andean State as a State of Mind." He critiqued Andean scholars for focusing on the state as an analytical unit. He complained that much good scholarship was being ruined due to the "albatross of the state," and urged...
What's a Niche Got to Do with It? Spatial Analysis of Niched Structures at Patipampa and Other Middle Horizon Sites (2018)
Excavations at the Middle Horizon (AD 500-100) capital city of Huari in the summer of 2017 focused on understanding processes of urbanization and the resulting realities of everyday life in the domestic sector of Patipampa. Several of the architectural spaces exposed during excavation were more intensively investigated. This paper focuses on the architectural space containing niched walls in order to understand how the Wari utilized this type of space in comparison to the uses of the other...
When Archaeology Meets History: Documenting the Conquest and Transition Period at Pachacamac, Peru. (2017)
Traditional accounts of the conquest of Peru are well known and universally accepted: in 1535, Francisco Pizarro – who had arrived two years earlier – decided to create a new capital in the neighbouring Rimac river valley, which would one day become the current city of Lima. In order to achieve this, Pizarro forcibly displaced all the contemporary inhabitants of Pachacamac, leaving this major Inka pilgrimage site completely abandoned. However, new finds recovered during the 2016 excavations at...
When Technological Analysis Becomes a Setback: The Case of the Points in the Interior of São Paulo State, Brazil (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Historically, the shift from the study of form to the study of techniques was guided by the transition from the Cultural History approach to the New Archeology. This theoretical readjustment was incorporated into Brazilian archeology decades later, strongly impacting the way that the collections was studied. Today the reality is that, although lithic...
When the Saints Come Marching In: Colony, Church and Change in the Andes (1480–1615) (2018)
Spanish conquest of the Andes commenced in 1532 and, for all intents and purposes, was over by 1572. Yet, this somewhat simplifies the story. Throughout the Andean region, but especially away from the early strongholds of Spanish power, such as the towns and cities, conquest was a mixture of appropriation and negotiation. Drawing on research from the Ica Highlands (South-central Peru) and the Cordillera Negra (North-central Peru) this paper examines how Spanish religious orders initially...
When Traditions Are Manufactured, Used and Broken: examples from Tupian contexts in Amazonia. (2017)
One of the most insightful contributions recently put forward by Anthropology and Ethnoarchaeology is related to the concept of the "communities of practice". It is naturally connected to issues such as the relation between language and material culture, transmission, identity, persistence, structure as well as the limits of socially permitted restructuring of practices, and even the possible contingencies which might cause deep change and break the structure and, therefore, Tradition. The...